Inside Small Business | Small Business & Home Business Marketing

How We Distinguish Ourselves

By Susan W. Hayes, Interplast President & CEO

Branding for Interplast—the first humanitarian organization to provide free reconstructive surgery for children with clefts, disabling burns and hand injuries—is a challenge.

The name Interplast does not convey that we provide life-changing surgeries for those who have no other access to care. Our name does not let people know that we teach, empower and partner with volunteers and overseas medical professionals so every child living in poverty has free access to the safest and highest-quality care—now and in the future. And in some of the 16 countries where we work, the name Interplast is shared with plastic and pipe-fitting companies. There are also several European nonprofits who call themselves Interplast, but they are completely separate and distinct organizations.

Confusion is often the starting point when it comes to distinguishing ourselves from others.

In addition, Interplast does not advertise. We are committed to transforming as many lives as possible, allocating 90 percent of our budget to medical programs; therefore, our branding efforts are limited to earned media, less costly Internet options like our blog and an occasional collateral.

Consequently, we are deeply grateful for and dependent upon the logo mark that Logoworks created for us. Its globe, caring hand and happy child tell more about who Interplast is and what we do than our name does.

But what do we do to distinguish ourselves?

As a nonprofit organization, it is crucial. Having a person recognize and then donate to us means that we can provide more surgeries to children living in poverty; it often means the difference between a child suffering from a disabling burn or regaining the ability to walk. Here are a few ways we work to get people to notice Interplast:

• We take every opportunity to increase our visibility on the Internet. Through constant updates on our blogs, our website and tagging on public photo sites, we work to increase our exposure and ability to be found through Internet searches about the type of work we do (for example, burns and clefts in developing countries).
• We work with our medical volunteers, corporate partners and others to find media hooks in regional newspapers and broadcast stations, as well as in new media. We also look for opportunities to connect our developing world doctors with foreign correspondents who may be covering other topics in the countries where we work.
• We focus on what is unique or innovative about our organization, like our use of technology in the field to bring together surgeons in isolated parts of the world with experts from around the world.
• We use our logo mark consistently on all of our collateral and medical program materials, as well as on our blogs and website.

Interplast is very thankful to Logoworks for its creative efforts in building such a meaningful mark for our organization and its branding. Our work to heal bodies and change lives around the world depends on it.

Posted on Tuesday, November 7th, 2006 at 2:53 pm and is filed under Branding, Customer Spotlight, Small Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.